31 December 2007

Horace

[from David Ferry's The Odes of Horace, 1997]

i.3 Virgil's Journey to Greece

May Venus goddess of Cyprus and may the brothersCastor and Pollux, the shining stars, the calmers,Guard you, O ship, and be the light of guidance;May the father of the winds restrain all windsExcept the gentle one that favors this journey.Bring Virgil, your charge, the other half of my heart,Safely to the place where he is going.

The breast of the man who was the first to dareTo go out in a little boat upon the watersMust have been made of oak and triple bronze,Fearing neither the sudden African squallContending with the North Wind, nor the stormsThe Hyades threaten, nor what the South Wind, Notus,Who rules the Adriatic, is capable of.

What way of dying could that man have fearedWho dared to be the first to look uponThe swimming monsters, the turbulent waters andThe dreadful cliffs of Acroceraunia?The purpose of the god who separatedOne land from another land was thwartedIf impious men could nevertheless set out

To cross the waters forbidden to them to cross.Audacious at trying out everything, men rushHeadlong into the things that have been forbidden.Guileful Prometheus audaciously by fraudBrought fire down to the human race and thusBrought fever down upon us and disease,And death that once was slow to come came sooner.

Audacious Daedalus, wearing forbidden wings,Tried out the empty air. And HerculesWent down to the Underworld, broke in and entered.No hill's too steep for men to try to climb;Men even try out getting up to Heaven.Is it any wonder, then, that Jupiter rages,Hurling down lightning, shaking the sky with thunder?